To provide memory with additional density for various kinds of computing operations, memory devices having a plurality of closely coupled memory elements (which may be referred to as 3D stacked memory, or stacked memory) are being developed.
A 3D stacked memory may include coupled layers or packages of DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) memory elements, which may be referred to as a memory stack. Stacked memory may be utilized to provide a great amount of computer memory in a single device or package, where the device or package may further include system components, such as a memory controller and CPU (central processing unit) or other system elements.
However, while additional layers of memory elements may be added to a stacked memory device, the operation of such memory is limited by the memory structure. In particular, the addition of memory die layers increases the amount of memory, but does not change the bandwidth of the memory device. For this reason, a stacked memory device may be limited in bandwidth, or may require a design that provides sufficient bandwidth for a maximum number of layers of memory even if many implementations do not require this amount of memory.